When It Counts
by SomewhereWeDream
Summary: When something traumatic happens, more than a victim is affected. Everyone is their own person, and they all deserve the chance to share their experience. This includes the last few minutes of Knockout, then continues on to what I think would happen.


**Author's Note: When I started this story, my initial motivation was that I wanted to really get into Castle's head. As I've gone through this first chapter and read some other stories, I've become more intrigued with the idea of getting into different characters' heads. I've never written a fanfic before, so reviews are appreciated very much! I'm thinking that each chapter will have a different POV, so if you like what's going on so far, please let me know and I'll keep them coming!**

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><p>Something glimmered in my peripheral vision, just barely able to be seen. A moment that could have spanned the blink of an eye put me on high alert, though I couldn't consciously understand why. All I knew was that even before the second reflection called my attention, my body tensed and my breath stuck in my throat. The dread of comprehension sent a rush of adrenaline through my being, the blur of her words and the impact of all my weight thrown against her occupying one inseparable second. The whizzing of the bullet was cut short by a quick, resonant thud. I prayed to God I had been hit, please, let me be the one who could protect her.<p>

I almost felt relief from the warmth flowing beneath me. Surely, the shock of the moment was the cause of my numbness to the shot. Then, there was the movement of a hand struggling from beneath my weight. The hand ghosted its way to where the blood was warmest, but it pushed down against her torso, not up against mine.

Realizing my eyes were shut tighter than this critical moment should allow, I flew them open and leaned my upper half away from Kate to see her face better. The blur never left, despite our mutual lack of movement. The one renegade tear making its way down my cheek was the only indicator I had of the blur being caused by my own crying. Her tears were mirror images of mine.

"No," I whispered.

Blood. Blood was everywhere, spreading across Kate's abdomen through her uniform, soaking the front of my shirt. Oh, God, I wasn't fast enough. She was going to bleed out, eyes wider with fear than I'd ever seen in this fearless woman, even more than when I found her in the wreckage of her burning apartment, more than when we clutched for life-preserving heat in that frozen hell. Not knowing what else to do, I reached my arm and entangled my fingers in her hair, the remnants of her military bun falling apart, just like everything else. I cradled my other hand around her neck and gently pulled her head slightly forward towards me, our eyes boring into each other, while my other arm rested on the other side of her body. I needed to feel her. The urge to cup her tear-streaked face was unable to be repressed; her own hand snaked up to rest against mine. Oh, God, the bleeding...Could she really die, right here, right now?

"Shhh… Kate. Please stay with me, Kate," I found myself saying to her rigid form. Our eye contact broke when she began to look around, her shock becoming apparent. "No, Kate," I whispered. "Stay with me, please, Kate."

Kate nodded ever so slightly, just trying so hard to keep a grip on reality as calm as she could. I felt her tears reach my fingers around the back of her neck. Her excruciating effort only made the despair start to close in on me more, but it doubled my pride in her. She was fighting this as hard as she could. I could see it in her eyes, her forced expression, her muted tears. I knew, though, that just because she fought with everything she had…didn't mean she would win. What if we couldn't win this?

Her eyes went to my mouth, like she knew I needed to say something. When our eyes met again, I lost all apprehension and hesitation. She needed to know that she had a real, absolute reason to stay here, alive.

"Kate, don't leave me. I'm here. Please...I love you," I whispered to her. "I love you, Kate. Don't leave me, please..."

I didn't know if she could hear me. If she could hear me, she probably couldn't make sense of what I was saying. Yet, as I watched her tightened expression, I could see something changing...Was that twitch the beginning of a smile?

Before I could really be certain that the rise of her lips was because of some piece of happiness and not the grimace of death, her eyes looked towards the sky, searching for some type of peace, and gently closed.

For a moment, I was dumbstruck. Writing scenes like this one for as many years as I had, I should have expected the limpness of her body in my arms, the tilt of her head as her consciousness disappeared. I should have detached, accepting the inevitable.

Doing what should be done was never one of my strongest habits.

"Kate…" I begged.

Nothing.

"Kate. Answer me. Look at me. Kate, open your eyes!"

As usual, she ignored me.

"No. No, no, no! Kate Beckett, you are staying with me! I know you can hear me," I pleaded, not caring who else watched as my life crumbled in my own arms. "Stop being so damn stubborn!" When she didn't even twitch in her usual agitation, I roared out, "Ryan! Esposito! Get over here!"

"We're right here!" I heard Ryan call out from only about ten feet away. He and Esposito were army-crawling their way to Kate. There were no signs of shock on their faces, their blank expressions masking the genuine fear in their eyes, but as hard as they tried, they couldn't hide the few tears that dared to glide down their faces.

"Dad!" I heard a scream from somewhere behind me. It hit me that Alexis had been yelling for me since the shot rang out, but her voice had only melted in with the background sounds of chaos.

"I'm fine, Alexis! Stay over there!"

"What about Beckett?"

I couldn't answer her. Kate's few shallow breaths were the only things keeping me from falling apart entirely.

"Dad, I'm coming over there!" Fear gripped me. I jerked my head back in her direction, and yelled at her as loud as I could.

"STAY DOWN, ALEXIS!"

"Where are you, Dad?"

"Stay over there!" I commanded, but I heard fast running towards me. The one time I absolutely need her to listen, she decides to go ahead and ignore me?

"I told you to stay where you were!"

Alexis stood over me, looking more incensed and fierce than I had ever seen her, and she met my eyes as soon as I looked up. She reminded me of Kate so much in that moment, I got goose bumps.

"How do you expect me to handle seeing you jump after Beckett right before a gunshot?" she challenged.

"I expect you to listen to me when I tell you stay down!" I told her.

"But _you_ are over here!" she retorted.

"What if the sniper had shot again?" I inquired loudly, almost yelling at her once more.

"I couldn't just-"

Gunshots enveloped us. I reached my arm to Alexis and yanked her to the ground, close to my body and Kate's failing form. I leaned in to Kate even harder while covering them both as much as possible.

The shooting stopped, and there was a shift next to me. Instantly, I scanned upwards and steeled myself to attack if it was the shooter returned to finish the job. He would have to get through me if he even thought about getting to her or Alexis.

Instead, my hostility met with Ryan and Esposito.

"Those shots aren't in this direction," Ryan said to no one in particular. He was assuring us as much as he was assuring himself.

"The ambulance is on its way," Esposito said as I leaned back and off of Kate's body, kneeling at her side with Alexis on her knees behind me. Esposito took his uniform jacket off and bundled it up, creating a makeshift bandage to push onto the wound. While he maneuvered the cloth, I tried and failed to ignore the dark red, almost brown, stained grass, and the sheer amount of blood on my clothes. How could someone bleed this much and still live?

They couldn't.

"It won't be here in time." I muttered. Sitting back and watching would torture me. I didn't want to see her suffering, growing paler and weaker within my reach, while I sat here, perfectly unharmed. I couldn't bear to imagine a life without her, which was exactly what would happen if I didn't busy myself. I silently thew my jacket off and coiled it into a rope, and together we all worked together on tightening bandages for an immeasurable amount of time-seconds, minutes, hours.

"Richard!" my mother yelled as she saw all of us on the ground, surrounding Kate.

"Take Alexis away. She doesn't need to see this," I told her, never looking up from Kate's face. My voice sounded flat even to me, but to my surprise Mother didn't say anything. She simply leaned down to help Alexis to her feet, but my stubborn daughter pulled her arm away.

"I'm not leaving."

"Alexis, you need to go," I told her.

"I'm not leaving," she repeated more firmly. Her tears overflowed.

"Alex-"

"Dad."

"Richard, let her stay. Let us stay."

My silence was taken as my consent. Ignoring her and my vexation towards my daughter, I focused on keeping Kate alive. Her skin was icy, her usual healthy pallor turning ashy and blue-tinted. The blood wasn't rushing out as rapidly as before, but I wasn't allowing myself to lull into a false sense of security. Less blood meant less heartbeats, and I refused to let Kate die, pushing even harder down onto her abdomen.

The unmistakable wail of a siren sounded nearby. My stomach lurched, but I refused to allow my hopes up until I knew with absolute certainty that she would be alright. If she would be alright.

As blood swelled through my fingers, the past and present melded together. I remembered throwing myself through the rising flames, only the thought of finding Kate driving me forward. In that damn freezer, my name the last word on her lips before she drifted away, leaving me more alone than I ever wanted to be again. Her smile when she called me a "five year old on a sugar rush". The way my heart reacted practically every single time our eyes met. Exchanging theories, like CIA or UFOs, about investigations, personal and professional. Her promise that she would bust me out of jail if, or when, I needed her to. The way she hid in the bathroom to hide that she was reading the love scene I wrote especially to make her blush. Every single one of those slipped chances we had to be together. The Hamptons, a trip I had planned just for us that turned into a reconnection with my mistake of an ex-wife. Going to LA, where I was so very close to telling and showing her everything she needed to accept as true. Our one kiss in the dark.

I turned to see Alexis's unashamed tears rolling down her cheeks, while my mother sank to the ground to hug her granddaughter. The now-distant gunfire stopped, but it didn't matter. The only bullet that had actually mattered hadn't been stopped in time. I didn't stop it in time.

A hand suddenly rested on my shoulder, breaking my reverie.

"Sir, I need you to move," a paramedic informed me gently. I was too stunned to move quickly, so the hurried Esposito and Ryan both reached for my arms and forced me to my feet. Anguish invaded me as the paramedics lifted her to the stretcher and began to push it forward to the ambulance. _They know what they're doing, Rick_, I told myself. Inhale, exhale. Time slowed down. My eyes followed the stretcher as it moved. Before her face was out of my vision, I saw the skin around her eyes twitching.

"Ca...Castle?"

A shiver went down my spine, allowing my entire being to react to her voice. She was asking for me. She was awake and asking for me. The same clarity that commanded me to give my confession haunted me now. The thought of her being anywhere without me and completely alone caused a sharp pain in my chest, a rise of anxiety in my chest, an inability to think straight. With my heart pounding, I instinctively began to follow her, but Ryan held me back and ignored my attempt to escape his confining hands on my shoulders.

"You're giving me no choice but to abandon her," I growled. I had to go with her. I had to get into that ambulance before it left. I had to-

"You would just get in their way if something happened," he said softly. Every nerve in my body raged against what he was saying; how could I get in the way? She was alive! How could I leave her alone now? My arms tensed and my fists clenched, preparing myself to push him off and run after her, but before I did anything, I looked down and was overtaken.

The puddle of maroon blood, converged in one splattered circle on the ground, gripped all my senses. The slight presence of terror still in the air. The headstones that surrounded us. The squeaks of an industrial-looking metal stretcher carrying her away, the taste of spreading numbness, my hands sticky and bright red, completely covered in her blood. The whir of the high-pitched siren as it took off from the street. I took all this in as I crouched on my knees in the same position I had maintained as I fought to keep her alive. The world around me was shaking uncontrollably, and it took me a moment to realize that it was my own body betraying me. Alexis kneeled and wrapped her arms around my shoulders from behind.

"Beckett is going to make it, Dad. She'll be fine. Shhh..." she whispered. Her calming voice reminded me of my pleading words with Kate, and my resolve to be with her only became more concrete.

"I need to go with her," I replied simply. I rose to my feet, taking Alexis with me, and then turned to kiss her on the forehead. I desperately wanted to stay with Alexis and my mother, but an even stronger part of me couldn't allow any wasted moments away from Kate. My time with her could already be limited, and I refused to abandon her now. Being too far away, unable to know what she was going through...I wouldn't be able to bear it. Seeing her leave had been more than bad enough. I was tired of her leaving.

"Let's go," Ryan said. I looked up and saw the conviction in his eyes; he wasn't just placating me. "I want to make sure she's okay too."

"I'm driving," Esposito claimed a second later.

The ambulance siren could still be heard if one were to listen closely enough. As we walked to Esposito's car, I met eyes with my mother. She looked visibly shaken, and I could tell that she longed to make sure I was truly alright before I left, but she knew I wouldn't be alright until I saw for myself that Kate was. I stopped in front of her and kissed her on the cheek, before resuming my hurried trek.

"I'm on my way, Kate," I murmured to myself. "Don't go anywhere I can't follow. I'm on my way."

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><p><strong>So! Did you love it? Did you hate it? Any questionsconcerns/compliments you want to share? If so, please let me know and rate it! The next chapter will be coming up soon hopefully, so please tell me what you all think :) Thank you so much for reading**


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